Just Today

There is something sad about opening your calendar to the month of August to add an event. 
There it is in black and white....the end of summer.
Not once, before I turned 18 was there even a reason to plan things three months in advance - summer seemed endless.
Now I have to know who has camp which week, when everyone has a doctor appointment and when we start school again. 
Really sad.
So I try hard to not let any part of summer slip away.
I always say "yes" to swimming with the kids. The tents and lanterns get pulled out and we sleep outside in the backyard. 
Summer slows down when we hunt for raspberries along the road to put in our yogurt.
Summer and berries are only here for a moment.

All of Them? YES!

  When you have a big family there are some things that just don't happen. Not many people can invite you over for dinner, because who has that many forks? You can never sit together in a restaurant that has booths or park in down town Baltimore because your vehicle takes up 3 spaces. Your kids do get invited over for sleepovers, but you can send 4 or 5 away and still not have an empty house. 

  But there's that one friend. Mine is Jeanette.  She invites ALL my boys over for a sleep over....and she likes it. She feeds them dinner and even makes pancakes for breakfast. Our house is very quiet on those nights (wonderful) and I know, between her boys and mine, that hers is very not.  

            Hope you have a Jeanette in your life!

Recovery is Sweet

If you could choose when to injure yourself in a way that requires surgery, I would highly recommend doing so at the age of 10. 
  Although Samuel was a bit nervous before hand, his after surgery mood was .....pretty much excited! He did have an issue with the whole, "nothing under your gown-blue hat" thing, but otherwise, it was all kind of a lark for him. The call from his friend Ricky, gifts, cards, balloons and ice cream made the whole thing seem like he was the luckiest guy around, which of course, made his other brothers all try to think how they could score a surgery. I was the only one seemingly tired from the day. All that fast healing seems so wasted on the young!
  

  

The Ouch that Won't Quit

What started as a fun Frisbee game on the beach, became a summer wrecker for Samuel a few weeks ago. Somehow he ended up with a torn meniscus that needs surgery. He has been patiently hopping around on crutches not being able to do much except swim. He was supposed to leave yesterday for California to play in the AYSO National Games, but tickets were cancelled and all he has to show for his big chance is a t-shirt. 
 Doing nothing has been hard, but he has managed to turn even this into a sports competition and has us all time him for how long he can stay suspended in the air between his crutches. (I should probably have stopped him, but there's only so much you can do.) Today is the surgery and we're off to the hospital. And his attitude is, as always, just fine.

Done and Over

   Last Friday finally arrived - the end of the school year. All the kids had their portfolio reviews and everyone passed to the next grade. So with that, we decided (you can do that when you homeschool) that we were done for the year. Books were packed away and summer dreams began. I had the kids all line up for the customary last day picture and all were excited, including the teacher behind the camera.


 Our last official school activity was the Mentoes in diet coke extravaganza. It was a dismal fail, so we made the best of it and celebrated by drinking the cokes and trying not to swallow the almost dissolved Mentoes in the bottom. 

How To Do 92 Perfectly

  A few days ago we celebrated my dad's 92nd birthday, complete with a german chocolate cake that my mom (a much younger 91 year old) baked.  He didn't get a whole lot of presents because as he is fond of saying, he already has everything he needs. I don't know what wish he made when he blew out his candles, but I know that he is everything I could have wished for in a father. He's a pretty quiet guy and has the kind of soft heart that makes him cry whenever he talks about the things he loves. And if I am sure of one thing in life it is that he loves me. I should be taking care of him by this point but he still comes to my rescue all the time - driving my kids when I can't, cleaning our pool or mowing our grass when we're away. So happy birthday again Daddy. I love you!

Work with What You're Given

  As we're wrapping up the school year (I'm so ready to be done), we're looking forward to our annual trip to the beach. Moving this many people to the beach for 3 weeks requires enormous amounts of preparation, organization and boxes of cereal.  And as I have hopes to do as little as possible when I get there, I decided that this school week would be home economics.  Which means that my children would be chopping, measuring, stirring and assembling meals for the freezer.

 Did I mention that my help consists of 7 boys?  And boys are different - almost strange actually. They seem to think that everything must be stirred four hundred and fifty times more than is necessary and their chopping took on a ninja feel. There was a good bit of sifting through sauces to find missing spoons and I'm not real sure that there was much effort given to accurate measurements, but we did it!  I have dreams of sitting on the beach while my precooked meals are happily warming in the oven.

  And did I mention that we take a freezer fully loaded onto a trailer that is then plugged back in when we arrive? Seriously.